Talk:The Cloverland Dairy Cow
Merge with Cloverland Dairy This page basically just echos the information on the Cloverland Dairy article. Do we really need both? Or would it be better to merge them into one? -- Brad D. (talk) 00:19, October 9, 2009 (UTC) :One's a commercial and one's a character, so I think they should be categorized separately. If we had some pictures or source material to beef them up, it would help a lot. —Scott (talk) 23:35, October 15, 2009 (UTC) ::The thing is that both of these articles basically echo the same exact information. I feel that we should be striving to create quality articles, not creating repetitive stubs mearly to populate categories and create lists. I think it's better to put everything we have on one page until the information grows to a point where it warrants splitting out to separate pages. Having both articles causes a reader to have to hunt around for bits of information that could easily be housed and organized in one place. Even with such articles as Linit Fabric Finish and Sir Linit (which do have pictures), I think that merging could result in us having 1 stronger article on the topic (which I think is better than having 2 weak ones mearly to populate categories). ::Now if the two articles here were beefed up and did have separate, unique and strong information (and pictures) then I would totally supporting keeping both articles separate. However right now we don't have that, so why spread and repeat the little information we do have over two nearly identical stubs on the off chance that someday we might be able to beef up their coverage? We can always split them later on; but until then, why not strive to have one quality article rather than 2 or 3 stubs scattered about? -- Brad D. (talk) 00:16, October 16, 2009 (UTC) :::We've got hundreds of "stubs" on the wiki. Look at a majority of the articles for books. They're there until someone comes along to add something to the page. Having the Cloverland Dairy Cow in the Characters category and the Cloverland Dairy article in the Commercials category provides a more fulfilling browsing experience. One could argue that no one's going to miss the Cloverland Dairy Cow if they're going through the Characters category, but if we start applying that logic to all similar cases, we start chipping away at that. I really don't have a problem with a little bit of duplication here and there for the sake of wiki structure. And as I said, we can stretch how similar the articles are with some better descriptions. —Scott (talk) 00:23, October 16, 2009 (UTC) The book stubs are different -- those don't repeat information that appears on another page. On the Policies page, we say: Every click should give a reader more information than they had before they clicked. We shouldn't have a page that simply repeats information given on the page that links to it. For example -- if a puppeteer only performed in one movie, and the only information that we have about that person is that they performed in that movie, then we don't create a separate page for that puppeteer. (The link on the movie's page already says the name of the puppeteer and the character they performed. The puppeteer's page would only have the name of the movie and the character, so it wouldn't add any extra information to what the reader already knows.) I think that's an important policy; it means that we don't waste people's time. The categories are a navigation tool, and so are links on the page. If clicking on a link gives you the same information that you just read, then it degrades the experience of reading the site, and it discourages people from clicking on more links. -- Danny (talk) 01:04, October 16, 2009 (UTC) :::That's a phrasing you added last November that changed what the initial item was saying. Which was directly about performers and crew. I can't find the discussion where we talked about it in full, but I think it's worth talking about. I don't think we're wasting anyone's time by having a character page and an episode page. Do we need to merge Arnold and Munchos? The Southern Colonel and Southern Bread? Let's say we merge The Cloverland Dairy Cow into Cloverland Dairy and we find that the cow appeared in other productions. Tracking it on the Cloverland Dairy page wouldn't make sense; that's not what articles about commercials are for. I still think the two Cloverland pages can be different enough to satisfy anyone who thinks they're too similar. —Scott (talk) 01:21, October 16, 2009 (UTC) ::::The "what if" question is easy to answer. Yes, if we merged them and then found that the cow appeared in other productions, we would split it out onto its own page. ::::We don't need to merge anything that we don't want to merge. We talk about "policies and guidelines" instead of rules, because we don't want to box ourselves into making a decision that doesn't make sense for us. The guidelines help us to think about the individual cases. I think the Arnold page has inherent value that could justify a separate page, ditto Delbert the La Choy Dragon, ditto Mack (who appears in several commercials and therefore couldn't be merged). ::::This particular page doesn't have any inherent value outside of describing a single commercial, and it doesn't have any pictures. I would argue to keep Arnold or the Southern Colonel, but seriously -- you're going to go to the mat for the Cloverland Dairy Cow? Why? -- Danny (talk) 01:38, October 16, 2009 (UTC) :::::I'm going to the mat for a guideline. By the way, what's the source for this commercial in the first place? Has anyone ever seen it? —Scott (talk) 01:41, October 16, 2009 (UTC) :It seems like we have conflicting guidelines here. One that says "every character with a name can get a page; populate categories as a means of navigation" and one that says "every page should provide valuable and unique information; each click provides new information". : We've refered to the latter when it was decided that we merged Gabe and Big Anthony into Telling Stories; Samson and Bobby into Tinseltown; Skreet and Yeager into S.U.D.S.; Piddles and Mr. Guy into Puppet Up!; Apollo and Cowbella into Pajanimals; Timrek and Oznog into The Teppums; Augie and Del into Late Night Buffet; and Dorothy, Dinah and Max into The Three Ds; Baby Jerry and Baby George into Seinfeld Babies; and many others. If we need a "Cloverland Dairy Cow" article to populate the characters category, why not also Piddles, Sampson, Gabe, Oznog, Baby Kramer, Apollo, Skreet, or Delbert Kastle? :If our coverage and depth of information on the cow grows we can split it into its own article; but until then, why have a week article streaching information around the wiki and wasting the readers time? -- Brad D. (talk) 02:42, October 16, 2009 (UTC) ::I don't want to get into this too much now (and I am getting a little tired of the blanket "If we let this stand alone, then we should merge/unmerge that" kind of arguments), but two quick notes. 1) Part of the reason this comes up is precisely because nobody seems to have seen the commercials or have an image so it seems mergeable (we have precedent going way back to Marathon Gasoline, merging in Pitchman Pumps some time ago). 2) There's a compromise brought up in the past, at least as far as characters that are actually Muppets, and has been used but is often forgotten. If we're concerned about someone being able to find the character and having a comprehensive Muppet list, the easiest thing to do is have a categorized redirect, i.e. merge or redirect the page but keep the category tags. So the redirect goes to the merged page, but the correct character name still appears in the appropriate category. We actually have examples of this on a few other pages, but I'm not up to digging it up right now. It wouldn't hurt to do that on most of the examples cited (but obviously not on "Green Frackle" kind of things). -- Andrew Leal (talk) 02:55, October 16, 2009 (UTC) :::On the source question, I believe that this commercial is on one of the reels at the Paley Center for Media. -- Danny (talk) 03:58, October 16, 2009 (UTC) ::::Coming back to this, I think Andrew's suggestion is a good one -- create a categorized redirect, so that the Cow still appears in Commercial Characters, but we avoid duplicate pages and redundant clicks. Scott, would that work for you? -- Danny (talk) 00:05, October 17, 2009 (UTC) :::::Until we have more details to flesh the articles out, I'll take that as a compromise, sure. —Scott (talk) 16:54, October 17, 2009 (UTC) ::::::Okay, cool. We should keep that in mind for other merge discussions, too... -- Danny (talk) 20:17, October 17, 2009 (UTC)